even by pure truth that the human heart can be recovered from its aberrations and its evil tendencies. None or all of these can effect an individual's, or a nation's happiness, until they be embodied in some living form, and sustained by a vigorous spirit of life.

But the evils that afflict universal humanity, and that require redress, demand a mightier than human power for their extinction. The entire framework of society needs re-organization. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it. Neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept thy law, nor hearkened unto thy commandments and thy testimonies, wherewith thou didst testify against them. Individually and socially, man is overwhelmed with sin, guilt, and death. Who shall restore him? Can any one but He who is mighty to save? There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

So then, brethren, Christ must be preached as the Saviour of the soul, the Redeemer of man, the Conqueror of sin, the bright and morning Star of lost humanity, the Restorer of the waste places, the Framer of the new heavens and new earth, in which righteousness shall dwell. This was his mission-it is his mission still. It is ours to point men to him, to echo the glorious saying-Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else. For this we may well lay aside our questionings and disputings, our divisions and strifes; they but hinder the proclamation of the wondrous factTo us is born a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. Jesus is the sole hope of humanity, and faith in him the sole instrument of its regeneration. To beget this faith is the purport of the gospel ministry: it can only be strong in success as it preaches CHRIST THE POWER OF GOD, AND CHRIST THE WISDOM OF GOD.

II.-FUTURE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.*

It was with no little interest that we commenced the perusal of Dr. Hamilton's lectures upon the revealed doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life. The subject is in itself one of profound and solemn import, and at the present time engaging the thoughts of many humble yet earnest minds. The Committee of the Congregational

The Revealed Doctrine of Rewards and Punishments.' By Richard Winter Hamilton, LL.D., D.D., Leeds. London: Jackson & Walford. 1847.

Lectures could not have selected just now a more appropriate topic for discussion; nor to a more able theologian entrusted its statement and defence. The lecturer possesses high intellectual endowments, a mind largely cultivated and imbued with various learning, of great imaginative power, and yet capable of close and accurate investigation.

Much accordingly was expected of Dr. Hamilton ;-that what could be said in maintenance of orthodoxy would be said, and said in strains of earnest and lofty eloquence. His theme demanded it, gave scope for it, and was sufficient to test the powers of the greatest intellect. Nor in this respect have we been disappointed. These lectures stand alone in the series of which they form a part for beauty of diction, splendour of illustration, profound thought, and subtilty of argumentation. The latter quality is indeed sometimes too predominant, giving an indefiniteness to the impressions intended to be made. Ordinary readers will often experience no little difficulty in following the line of argument pursued. The almost entire absence of connective particles from the writer's periods, the terse, sententious, oracular style of his composition, and the frequent use of words of classical but unusual derivation, throw no trifling barrier in the way of a clear apprehension of his meaning, and do much to hinder conviction of the value and conclusiveness of the course of reasoning employed. It is only by close application, by patient attention and earnest reflection, that the reader can appreciate his investigations, or form a clear idea of the bearing of many of the lecturer's refined processes of thought.

But has Dr. Hamilton succeeded in placing beyond dispute the truthfulness of the common views of future punishment? We fear not. After a calm review of all that he has written, in our opinion the question is not advanced much nearer to decision. Certainly, on some points, his arguments are conclusive and final, especially in relation to the doctrine of universal restoration. Nothing can exceed the power and convincingness of his remarks on this topic. But with regard to the theory of annihilation-a theory ever and anon obtruding itself from age to age in the Christian church-we are constrained to think he has failed; and its advocates will find it no difficult task to rebut his arguments, if they have. not even forestalled them. Let it be understood as it is frankly declared, that with the latter theory we do not sympathise; but fairness demands from us the expression of our opinion, that Dr. Hamilton's reasonings do not meet all the difficulties of the case.

As the brevity necessarily imposed upon us precludes any very extended notice of the whole course of Dr. Hamilton's arguments, which indeed would require a volume as large as his own, we shall confine our remarks to a few of the most salient and important points.

It is on the facts and reasonings of his first lecture, that Dr. Hamil ton rests the doctrine he urges on our belief. He lays, as the basis of the edifice, the spirituality, the responsibility, and necessary immortality of man. That the nature of man embraces these three especial

and universal properties he endeavours to prove by an appeal to reason. It is not, he says, a question of revelation. Revelation itself relies and presumes upon these properties as forming the nature and constitution of man. They are therefore to be ascertained by investigation into the facts of man's consciousness. "Whatever belongs to man, every ingredient of his nature, falls most directly within the province and function of our reason. Reason is of its own nature concerned with facts and principles," p. 14. From this ground, therefore, may we inquire into the true character and constitution of man ; what his nature, relations, prospects? what his proper being, and what it shall be ?

But although it be correct, that revelation can make nothing true that is not already true, that its function is that of attesting truth, and rendering it sure and certain to our minds; yet that function is most appropriately exercised in attesting the truths that relate to a state or condition of which man, by Reason, can at best only guess the existence. Reason cannot carry us beyond the grave, nor find out the mysteries of death. Death must inevitably bound its conclusions. The future is enigmatic. Whatever is to be known of the life to come, can in the very nature of things be known only as a matter of revelation, and not as a fact evolved from natural sources by the power of thought or observation. Man has no sense that can penetrate the dark veil of coming destiny.

If then it be the case, that all arguments founded upon the conclusions of reason can at the best be but happy guesses, having no certainty nor evident truth, as is the judgment of many of the profoundest metaphysicians, then must any doctrine of future rewards and punishments founded thereon partake of the same uncertainty and speculative character. We therefore regret that Dr. Hamilton has employed revelation rather as proof corroborative of his conclusions from reason, than, as it ought to be, the paramount and exclusive authority in a field so peculiarly its own.

And this the more from another consideration. If, in the present day, owing to the prevalence of revelation, there be a general agreement among philosophers on the certainty of that future life which man anticipates, this was not the case when no ray of light from above dawned upon the dark lot and present being of humanity. The least acquainted with ancient philosophy and history, knows how great was the variety of belief upon this point then existing. And many reasons might be adduced to render it highly probable, that the idea of an immortal life was rather the remnant of traditions of the primal happiness of man, a return to which was an early promise of God, than a conception derived from the painful perplexities of the present life, or the result of a process of reasoning pursued by those who were believers in its reality. Now reason enters upon the inquiry not as reason did then. Revelation has thrown its rocket-light even into the closed recesses of the infidel's consciousness. No one can if he would, and some attempt it, dismiss the intruder, or quench the light which

glares upon him. But the general and almost utter failure of antiquity to elucidate the mystery of the life to come, must be regarded as a certain proof of the incapacity of reason to work the problem, and also demonstrates the insecurity of any reasoning which has no better basis than its own guesses, unsupported by the clear depositions of heaven's own revelations. Probabilities may favour the anticipation; and if there be a life to come, doubtless our present nature would in some form show its adaptation for it; but they are a poor substratum on which to cultivate hopes that shall be full of life and immortality.

Upon such probabilities, Dr. Hamilton has chosen to rest his argument for the absolute and essential immortality of man. This we regret; for if these be found to have but slender and perhaps intangible existence, it may seem as if the immortality of man is after all but a dream, while in truth it reposes upon the unshaken foundation of God's revealed will. But we proceed to notice those proofs from reason which are called to bear the weight of this momentous conclusion.

The problem to be solved is, whether man once existing shall ever cease to exist? Dr. Hamilton commences by observing that “there are natural proofs, strong and convincing, that this is not the only life of man.' These must be distinguished from mere presumptions, and from such attempted proofs as prove too much. In reference to this class of proofs, Dr. Hamilton thus writes:

"Not organization the most perfect, not immaterialism the most conscious, not any established inferiority of the body to the soul, not any presumed independence of the soul on the body, not any evidence, could it be obtained, that the mind is identical amidst corporeal change, not any resemblance of that change to a metempsychosis of mind, can satisfy us that these are sound rudiments of judgment, or that they were ever prevalently allowed. True, original reason demands something clearer, stronger, always as it is found to be the expectant and advocate of immortality."—p. 71.

It is evident from this passage, that Dr. Hamilton regards many of the proofs hitherto relied upon as insufficient. But, in a subsequent page, we find him urging one of these very arguments-that of the observed independence of the soul on the body. Thus, in page 82, he says

"It can disregard and spurn the earthly, fleshly life with which it is now associated. It holds an independent dominion. It looks afar. It soars on high. Its affinities are without. Its communings yearn beyond itself. It is drawn to a mysteriously distant centre. It longs after another form and order of being. It reads its own book of light. It rules its own world of ideas."

We are not able, moreover, to reconcile this with what is said on page 69, where he is combating the assertion of the soul's independency on the animal functions.

"These," he says, "cannot originate thought, or any intellectual agency; but then no proof, at this stage of the inquiry can be given, that thought or any intellectual agency, may proceed in separation from them. This would be to tread precarious ground. Our only known development of mind is by

means of that organism which it rules. For all that we can adduce to the contrary, these are mutually subservient."-p. 69.

That this contradictory reasoning should occur after a statement of those cogent, natural proofs of absolute immortality on which our author relies, strikes us as singular, if not the expression of a tacit feeling of uneasiness that their cogency was not so great as would fain be hoped else why a recurrence to an argument before pronounced futile? And this is the more remarkable, inasmuch as no proof is anywhere else attempted that the soul can exist in the full exercise of all its powers and attributes, apart from a physical organism. Reason would pronounce it impossible.* And yet the immortality of the soul in a separated state is sought to be proved, before any proofs are adduced to show that it can exist and act at all, when divested of its material organization.†

The analogies of nature, together with every manifestation of the Divine Being known to us, all point to the absolute necessity of some physical organism to the due action of the powers of the soul. If it be immaterial in its nature it can apparently act only through material forms. Its very existence is known to us only through some tangible or corporeal display of its powers. No spiritual existence whatever is known to us in any other way. Yet the foundation of Dr. Hamilton's argument is laid in the assumption, that man's soul is an entity, containing every power self-involved in its being, and capable of action, being, and life, apart from its corporeal organization. "But," says Dr. Hampden, "we go beyond the basis of the facts when we assume, in our abstract arguments for the natural immortality of the soul, its separate existence apart from the body." This important question is avoided by our author, and so far his subsequent reasonings are subject to suspicion.

* On this point Cudworth thus writes: "A life perfectly incorporeal is a privilege belonging to the Holy Trinity only; and consequently, therefore, human souls when by death they are divested of these gross earthly bodies, they do not then live and act completely, without the conjunction of any body, and so continue till the resurrection or day of judgment: this being a privilege which not so much as the angels themselves, and therefore no created finite being is capable of; the imperfection of whose nature necessarily requires the conjunction of some body with them, to make them up complete, without which it is inconceivable how they should either have sense or imagination." -Intellect. System, p. 818.

"The notion of the separate existence of the soul has so incorporated itself with Christian theology, that we are apt at this day, to regard a belief in it as essential to orthodox doctrine. Even in maintaining that such a belief is not essential to Christianity, I may incur the appearance of impugning a vital truth of religion. I cannot, however, help viewing this popular belief as a remnant of scholasticism. I feel assured that the truth of the resurrection does not depend on such an assumption; that the life and immortality of man, as resting on Christ raised from the dead, is a certain fact in the course of divine Providence; whatever may be the theories of the soul, and of its connexion with the body."-Hampden's Bampton Lectures, p. 310.